
Communist authorities fought the Catholic Church in Poland by all available means. One of the forms of repression they used was the conscription of clerics into the army. This way of harming the Church was also used against the seminarians of the Seminary in Kielce. Between 1959 and 1980, about 100 candidates for the priesthood from Kielce were drafted and served two years in military units located in various cities, including Brzeg, Szczecin-Podjuchy, Bartoszyce and Chełmno. In the army, the soldier clerics were subjected to surveillance by military counterintelligence, political indoctrination and various operational activities, which were intended to lead them to abandon their priestly formation and return to secular life. Thanks to the maturity of the seminarians and the multiple assistance they were given by pastors in garrison towns and the Kielce Seminary, most of the seminarians continued their preparation for the priesthood after returning from the army. This article describes this experiment by the Communists from 1959-1980 of conscripting seminarians of the Kielce Seminary.
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